Seven Glimpses of the Multipolar World, 27 May 2023
Modi, What World Crisis?, Clendinnen, Toynbee, Bakhmut, Plokhy, Mearsheimer, LiveStreams are Go
Each week in my newsletter, I offer seven glimpses for seven days of the multipolar world. This week, I share glimpses of:
The Big Story. Modi in Sydney
Governing the Multipolar World. Is this really a crisis unseen in 100 years?
Using History Mindfully. Inga Clendinnen and the urge to shape stories.
Fragments of the Burning Archive. Toynbee, Anglo-American Hegemony and World Government.
What surprised me most. Failure to Admit Defeat in Artemovsk.
Reading. Plokhy vs Mearsheimer on Russia-Ukraine-NATO War.
Gratitudes and Works-in-Progress. Livestreams are Go.
If you enjoy my content have you considered upgrading to a paid subscription? I explain in Section 2 (Governing the Unruly Multipolar World) how next posts will develop some theses on the crisis of the world. I will be writing these pieces exclusively for my paid subscribers.
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What is your favourite episode on the Burning Archive podcast backlist, and why?
What is a ‘fragment of the Burning Archive’ (a cultural or historical artefact meaningful to you and the times) that you would like featured on the podcast?
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1. The Big Story
You could say there are three big stories this week, as we try to make sense of the world in crisis. NATO lost the largest battle of the 21st century, and Russia captured Bakhmut, to turn it into Artemovsk. This is a milestone in the NATO-Russia-Ukraine War, but I will save commentary until next month. Both Presidents Putin and Xi addressed the Eurasian Economic Union, and flagged the rebalancing of the world.
But the Big Story I focus on in my podcast this week is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches in Hiroshima, Port Moresby and Sydney this week. They express the growing confidence, diplomatic gravitas and cultural soft-power of India. India’s emergence, together with the other Eurasian powers, is forcing major changes in the multipolar world. If you want to watch Modi’s speech you can do so here, with a voiced over English translation.
2. Governing the unruly multipolar world
India is a graceful, if forceful, entrant to the unruly multipolar world’s main stage. The China and USA rivalry, we all understand. The pantomime of Russian evil, we have all grown too tired of. Old, complacement Europe and tired, delusional Britain, we know too well. And little, old Australia looks like a little country lost.
But over the last week I have been reflecting on my general theme that the world is going through a crisis it has not seen for 100 years. This view is supported by comments by Xi JinPing in Moscow after his summit meeting in March 2023 with Vladimir Putin. A strong case can be made in support of the idea, and I articulated some of the similarities between the world crisis of 1911-18+ and the world crisis of 2020-2023+ in my YouTube livestream this week that I have also released as some separate videos.
But one of my principles of method (to be grandiose), or my gardener’s rule of thumb (to be humble) is not to shackle my mind with single, certain narratives of the past, of History. History is complex enough to sustain a 1001 nights of storytelling about its past and future. We can always renew our story-telling tomorrow night with new glimpses, memories, archetypes, characters, documents and plots. We might plot the story of the World Crisis one night as a tragedy, in which an unhappy American Empire, led by a vengeful, demented Captain Ahab destroys itself in its eternal search for the unattainable. Then the next night, we might tell a lighter comedy of a pluripotent, symphony of civilizations that offers all the cultured peoples of the world a night of fine music, splendid conversation and true culture. What will the story of the World Crisis be, tomorrow?
Since April 2021 on the podcast I have been exploring a general thesis about today’s greatest World Crisis of 100 years. That thesis has been that four great motions are changing the force field of the world crisis, and giving birth to a new kind of multipolar world. Empires or Great States are in rivalry, with America declining and China rising. Political institutions and cultures are disordered, most acutely in the Atlantic states; so much so that we may have entered something I called a post-democratic society. Societies are fragmented, driven by profound changes that cannot be readily manipulated, such as population ageing, education patterns, digital technology and wider global distributions of wealth. Finally, the cultures of “the West” are in decay, although at the same time a centuries long process of convergence on Anglo-American culture or Western civilization, is going into reverse. Then, of course, the four horsemen of catastrophic contingency ride in: climate, disease, finance and war.
But it might be that I have it wrong. It is certainly the case that there are certain tropes, habits of thought, and patterns of metahistory with which I emplot this story. It is good to change that up, and to look with truly open eyes, neither shaded by gloom nor pinked up with optimism, on how events might unfold. None of us are experts in the future after all.
So I have decided to write a series of posts for my paid subscribers only reflecting on my current thoughts on how to tell the story of today’s world crisis. On Monday it will begin with some regathered reflections on the meaning of “world crisis” and theses on the world crisis, taken from my forthcoming book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat. If you would like to go on this journey of discovery into the centre of the world crisis with me please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
3. Using history to live mindfully in the present.
The temptation to see a pattern in the chaos, to make a story out of the fragments of the past is very strong indeed. It is human, all too human. It is Wallace Steven’s rage to order the sea. It is also described precisely and wisely by the great Australian historian, anthropologist and writer in later life, Inga Clendinnen (1934-2016). I have some essays on Clendinnen in From the Burning Archive, so will focus in this newsletter on the text that I happened to read this week. In a piece describing the accounts of the conquest of Mexico that both conceal and reveal reality in their fragmentary texts, Clendinnen wrote,
“This dispiriting consensus as to Spanish invincibility and Indian vulnerability springs from the too eager acceptance of key documents, primarily Spanish but also Indian, as directly and adequately descriptive of actuality, rather than as the mythic constructs they largely are. Both the letters of Cortés and the main Indian account of the defeat of their city owe as much to the ordering impulse of imagination as to the devoted inscription of events as they occurred. Conscious manipulation, while it might well be present, is not the most interesting issue here, but rather the subtle, powerful, insidious human desire to craft a dramatically satisfying and coherent story out of fragmentary and ambiguous experience, or “the historian’s temptation) out of the fragmentary and ambiguous ‘evidence’ we happen to have to work with.”
“‘Fierce and Unnatural Cruely’: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico,” Selected Writings, ed. James Boyce (2021) p. 117.
To use history mindfully to live with the present, we must soar with the winds of that ordering impulse of imagination; and also step back to observe the ceaseless chatter of the history mind. Perhaps the world crisis is all just in our thoughts?
4. Fragments from the Burning Archive
Mark Mazower, Governing the World: the History of an Idea (2012) is full of gems and fragments of Western ideas about world government, imperial hegemony and statecraft. I recommended this book to listeners on my podcast episode this week. Among my favourite discoveries in re-reading this history of the idea of world government, especially as it played out in the League of Nations, and then more extensively the United Nations, was a lost fragment of Arnold Toynbee
Toynbee was the magisterial author of the 12 volumes of A Study of History, which described the rise and fall of world civilizations. His work is rarely read today, although it is returning to influence in some circles. He was a scholar, and a dabbler in world affairs. He played minor roles for the British Empire in World War One and the League of Nations. In the 1930s and 1940s he was President of the British Royal Institute of International Affairs. He was part of the long British tradition of Atlanticist historians, who dabbled in geo-strategy, that continues to this day.
In this striking passage from Governing the World, Mazower wrote,
[During World War Two] Toynbee warned that the future of the world would be decided in the clash between “the Continetal versus the Oceanic Pattern of World Organization.” Drawing on old tropes in liberal political thought, he identified the choice between the militaristic imperialism or maeritime federalism - a ‘democratic Anglo-American world-commonwealth.” But the democratic path would need to be stiffened with a dose of leadership; it would require nothing less than a “world directorate” “of the United Statesand the Brish Commonwealth”…a “World-Hegemony temporarily in the hands of the English-speaking peoples.”
At least, Britain had an empire, served by a court of imperial historians, that dared to say its name.
5. What surprised me most this week.
I know it should not surprise me, but I am going to list my biggest surpise this week as the distorted reporting in the Western media on the Fall of Bakhmut and the Ukrainian suicide mission into Belgorod.
6. What I am reading or listening to
I began reading Serhi Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War. I am sorry to say I have found it, so far, to be old-style nationalist myth-making. I will do a review of it in the next few weeks, possibly as a separate, free substack article or on the podcast in June or July.
On the other hand, I also watched John Mearsheimer’s Ukraine Salon, “Where is the Ukraine War Going? 22 May 2023” on YouTube. This is essential viewing if you are interested in this war, and want to find the road back to diplomacy and dialogue, or even just free yourself from the immoral, mindless narratives peddled in the mainstream media.
7. Works-in-progress and gratitudes
This week my works-in-progress and published content were:
on the podcast I published Episode 102. Modi Goes to Sydney
On the YouTube Channel I did my third livestream, focussed on comparing he July 2014 and the 2021-23 ongoing World Crises. It recommended five books on World War One that offer different insights into World War and Crisis. You can watch the replay here, and the opening section here. The section of the sream on Clark, The Sleepwalkers, with come out, with some editing enhancements, on the weekend.
I also released a video version of my essay, The Crooked Tiimber of the dangerous, unhappy American Empire. I had a bit of fun with black and white cutouts in this video. Please enjoy.
I have proofed three quarters of 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat.
On Twitter, I did a short thread on Niall Ferguson’s prediction Biden would stumble into World War Three, shared my prediction from February on what would happen when Bakhmut fell, and attempted this banter with Peter Frankopan, when in Toynbee mode, but he did not take the bait.
In all of this I am especially grateful to Hrvoje Morić of the Geopolitics and Empire Podcast for reaching out to me on Twitter. More on that next week.
Next week…
On Monday I will release my next paid-subscriber-only post on Theses on the Crisis of the World.
On Tuesday on Youtube, I will do my next Livestream (May 23, 4.30pm AEST) on India and its soft power in the new multipolar world, building on my latest podcast. I will share what I am reading and writing on this topic, and will respond to viewer questions and comments.
On Friday on the podcast, I might talk about America’s debt ceiling crisis, depending on how that goes. Or the Mahabharata or the World Crisis. So many things to talk about!
I will be getting my online courses ready for launch, and my book 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat ready for publication. I am also going to draft a couple of articles on the Indo-Pacific and political disorder in Australia.
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